Dear Fiona,
I’m selling a flat and buying a house. I keep being asked – by friends and family – if it’s going to be my ‘forever home.’ I hadn’t, to be honest, thought that far ahead – I’d been concentrating on sufficient decently-sized bedrooms for my children, school catchment zones, proximity to public transport, and the direction the garden faces – but oh my goodness the whole buying thing is stressful, and once I’ve factored in stamp duty and more it’s also really expensive. Plus, people keep saying things like “if it’s a forever home, then you can really decorate it beautifully.” (The flat was not terribly attractive, and I didn’t do much to it because I knew it was a stop gap – though it ended up being quite a long stop gap.) Maybe I should be looking for a forever home? Are forever homes a good idea? It would be nice to know that I never have to do this again and I would love my children to have a proper sense of security, and to be able to wallpaper and put in new bathrooms and all the rest. So – is there anything that I should think about in particular?
Thanks!
Love,
A south London Mum XX
Dear south London Mum,
Thank you for your very to-the-point letter, raising a subject that has been playing on my mind. Mostly that’s because when we moved, nearly three years ago, also swapping a flat for a house, I was pretty determined that this would be it and that I would never again put myself through the traumatic process of packing up and saying goodbye to a much-loved home. But I’m no longer so sure about this house being the last house – and I’m also not sure how I feel about the term ‘forever home’. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t a deeply appealing concept; it is, and that’s doubtlessly why bungalows are suddenly seeing their value rocket, equally sought after by first-time buyers as last-time buyers. It’s also why #foreverhome has so many hits on social media – and I think that is where most of my issue with it lies.
In this country, being a homeowner is still held up as a key signifier of success, despite a third of those aged 35-44 being renters – a marked increase on even a decade ago. Ever-rising house-prices – combined with costs related to childcare, transport and more – means that many might be renting indefinitely, regardless of how successful they are in other areas of their lives, and I thus can’t help but hear ‘forever home’ as rather a smug announcement of future surety that not everybody has, which seems an unnecessary one-upmanship – even if that wasn’t the intention at all. (Though if it was, it’s rather a surprising inverse of aspiration, if you consider history: once upon a time, it was peasants who were tied to the land and their homes while the upper echelons of our then feudal society were free to move around.) Finally, it makes me want to knock on wood – really hard, to make really sure that the devil can’t hear – because, as Tamsin Saunders of Home & Found asks, “who actually has forever?” There is so much that we can’t guard against: death, divorce, illness, sudden economic collapse whether personal or national, war. I’m aware that I’ve possibly brought the mood down by several notches, but, as Tamsin says, “all we can know for sure is that we have this moment and the life we are living right now.” And so, having dealt with my semantic distaste, let’s start with Tamsin’s realistic – yet liberating – observation.
Your approach to house hunting is admirably pragmatic, and you will doubtlessly find somewhere that will enable your children to get a good education, you to get to work, and for you all to enjoy your time in the appropriately facing garden, together. Right now, those are your priorities; my own, for buying our Victorian terrace in a small town in East Sussex, were very similar – give or take proximity to the beach (a five-minute walk) and a supermarket (snap.) So why, you might ask, am I now thinking that this house might not be the last house? Partly it’s because when we moved here I found myself struggling with the adjustment more than I ever imagined, and the idea of this house being forever made me feel trapped and claustrophobic – which is perhaps something to bear in mind for anyone reading this who is moving out of a city and wants to get it right (i.e. don’t put too much pressure on yourself.)
But the other reason I’m no longer sure that this home is forever is because I’ve got an eye on the rather glorious four-storey modernist houses five miles east of where we are now, which are built into the dunes actually on the beach – though they are hopeless for schools, the station and a supermarket. However, one day, the primary dictates of where I live will change, in no small part due to the inevitability of my children growing up. Alongside, my ability to meal plan might improve, my dependence on London might lessen, and I’m drawn by the immersive situations of those houses, and their architecture, which I see as an inviting challenge to my decorative aesthetic. Incidentally, Philip Hooper, joint managing director of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, used to live in one of them – he moved because “now that I am not quite as energetic as I used to be, I don’t want to be going up lots of stairs and jumping into the sea the whole time.” Also, he’d always wanted to live in a Georgian house, which he now does (it’s glorious, and in the June issue of House & Garden, on newsstands now.) If you examine the lives and homes of our Top 100, you’ll see that Philip’s proclivity for change isn’t unusual. And this is my point: do we want to limit our lives by swearing unending allegiance to a particular arrangement of bricks? True, the Brexit vote has made the dream of running a B&B from a Normandy gîte harder to achieve, but isn’t it rather exciting to know that, if we suddenly find ourselves with a deep yearning for a smallholding on Mull, or a houseboat in the Norfolk Broads, or a slick flat in the Barbican – we can do it?
But, but . . . . this isn’t entirely what you’ve asked. And alongside the truth that exists in paragraph above, and of equal importance, is the fact that, as Paula Sutton of Hill House Vintage remarks, “although you never know what is around the corner, putting down roots and having a sense of permanence is a beautiful and reassuring thing.” She continues, “I particularly like the idea of my children returning to a home that they spent some of their childhood in.” Which is an idea that I find very attractive, too – perhaps the more so because I don’t have it myself (not that it’s scarred me, I hasten to add – and, for what it’s worth, I don’t think a permanent home is the only way to give children a sense of security.) So let’s say that forever really is going to be forever, and think about what else you might want to add to the list of requirements, alongside the school catchment area and number of bedrooms.
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The term that often goes hand-in-hand with ‘forever home’ is future-proofing, and it refers to thinking about things we generally prefer to ignore, and becoming sufficiently acquainted with the possibilities of room access and potential layout to know that you could continue to live in your house even if you end up with compromised mobility. Bungalows being few and far between in south London, experts would suggest that you examine the entrance (are there steps up to the front door?), the width of a staircase (will it fit a stair lift?) and whether or not there is room for a lift shaft in the future – or, failing all that, is there space for a ground floor bathroom and bedroom? You can go further, if you want to: think about whether a wheelchair could turn around comfortably, and if you’re going to re-decorate, which you suggest you’re keen to do, consider making doors slightly wider, and, when doing electrics, wire in such a way that it’s easy to make them remote controlled in the future. In bathrooms, reinforce the walls before you tile so that you can easily add grip rails later, and perhaps ensure that at least one bathroom is a wet room.
Then, think about how much garden you might want to be responsible for as you get older – and indeed how much house, which especially applies to anyone who is making what they hope is a final move to the countryside, for it can be tempting to go in search of quite a lot of extra space. “We had this idea that more was better,” recounts Paula, of her search for such a house, and confessing that Hill House, being on the small side, wasn’t their first choice. “We ended up losing three much larger dream ‘forever’ houses in a flurry of bidding – but I now feel that we were saved from ourselves. We can manage just under an acre of garden ourselves and our house isn’t too grand or large.” You might also want to look into energy efficiency (we tend to want our rooms to be warmer as we age) and to think about how close you are to essential amenities such as a shop, a good GP, and a hospital, remembering that Nicky Haslam’s ground floor London flat is opposite the Cromwell Hospital - “no fool, me,” he says of its location. And then, you need to take stock of the community, and whether there is one, and if it’s one in which you might perhaps find a place.
Because what is worth knowing is that some houses become forever homes because of that community, and the creeping realisation that you’ve achieved nirvana where you are – which doesn’t mean that you can’t still experiment with different styles or change the way that you live by rethinking the room layout, either through necessity or desire. Several designers among the House & Garden Top 100 have completely re-designed interiors that they had already designed, decades back. “Tastes evolve. And I think they should,” says Nina Campbell, pointing out that is much less expensive to re-do interior decoration than it is to pack and sell a house, and buy and unpack, and start all over again – and it’s doubtlessly much less stressful, too.
But having said that, and while agreeing that future-proofing is of value, I wouldn’t deny yourself a house you fall in love with because it can’t fit a stair lift – for who’s to say you won’t live to 100 without ever having need of one? What’s equally salient – if you decide that this isn’t going to be your last move – is that, knowing that even supposedly transitory accommodation might be forever (or at least, as you’ve discovered, for longer than you envisaged), “you make the most of what you’ve got, and treat every home as if you are going to be there long term, and plan and plant for the future” ordains Tamsin (which, incidentally, is the advice you would have received had you written to me about that stop-gap flat.) In other words, don’t hold back on the wallpaper, or giving yourself the bathroom of your dreams.
You might conclude that I’ve see-sawed somewhat as to whether I think a forever home is a good idea, and I have – and that’s because I think that more than anything it’s a question of personal choice. What I would like to see is significant rent reform, so that certainty can be a valid option for non-homeowners too, if they want it. But I hope that this helped you – certainly I hope that it’s shown you what the options are and encouraged you to put effort into wherever you live, for however long. Good luck with the move!
With love
Fiona XX
